


Needs

by BridgetteIrish



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 03:50:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5651473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BridgetteIrish/pseuds/BridgetteIrish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has needs.  Sometimes they fight them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kara

**Author's Note:**

> I love this fic a lot. I hope you do too.

The first time Kara Danvers forgot to sleep, was finals week her sophomore year in high school. She’d spent hours each night studying, writing and finishing final projects. Any moment not spent on schoolwork was spent taking long, clandestine flights across the lake near her home, trying to ease her anxiety. Loving as they were, Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers expected the very best from both of their children and Kara was still getting her bearings on Earth. She still had so much to learn. She knew, while she felt no impulse for sleep, that it’s restorative and healing powers were necessary to adjust her Kryptonian cells with Earth’s circadian rhythms. Alex was away at college and had her own finals to prepare for, and so their usual evening phone calls dwindled. Without her big sister to remind her to lay down and close her eyes, Kara simply… forgot.  
Kara’s principal called Eliza the day of her final History presentation when Kara stood in front of the class, giving her presentation in a foreign language nobody had ever heard before. She had dark circles under her eyes, dry cracked lips, as though she’d stood outside on a windy day too long and her fingernails had been bitten so ferociously that they bled slightly at the tips.

She’d been excused from the rest of her finals for “medical treatment” and slept on Alex’s bed for 43 hours straight.

Alex came home the as soon as her last final was finished and was sitting next to Kara, stroking her hair as she awoke. The next 3 hours she spent watching Kara sip every drop of soup Jeremiah brought her and writing “sleep” in the 9:00 pm spot in every page of Kara’s planner through the end of the year.

The first time Kara Danvers forgot to eat, was after Molly Creighton asked her to the winter formal her senior year in college. She couldn’t identify the odd, fluttering sensation that had settled in her belly and she mistook it for illness. Her normal favorite foods lost their appeal and her whole mind was consumed with Molly’s red curls, soft pink lips and lilting, full laugh. It was all she thought about. Alex tried to explain to her that it was normal to be nervous about a date with someone you really like, but Kara’s head spun and her breath became short. Food became an afterthought. She was found passed out in the snow the morning before the formal, between the library and fine arts building. Once again, she was pulled from school and never got to go on her date. Kara never asked how or why Alex was able to get out of grad school to come home and see her, but she and Eliza spent a week in the kitchen ensuring that every morsel set in front of Kara was consumed. Kara remembered the fierce hug she received from her big sister after eating her third helping of lasagna and trying to explain the way Molly Creighton had made her feel.

The first time Kara Danvers forgot to eat and sleep at the same time, she was in Cat Grant’s employ.  
Cat had confronted her with the knowledge that she was Supergirl and Kara was incapable of denying it. When she had removed her glasses and met Cat’s penetrating gaze, that flutter in her belly that had been so long forgotten returned with a vengeance. Kara turned over and over in her mind the moment that the wind had blown Cat’s perfect golden curl across her face and her perfect lips had turned up in that famous smirk. Kara had had many dates since Molly, but had never felt that flutter again, or that all-consuming flooding of her senses… until Cat. The realization paralyzed her. 

The day after the revelation on the balcony, her already demanding boss became a virtual slavedriver. Assuming Kara could use her superpowers to accomplish any one of her daily tasks and simultaneously, she sent Kara on any number of impossible missions, assigned her lengthy projects and ordered her all over the city. What Kara never mentioned, however, was that unless someone was in danger, she tried her damndest not to utilize her abilities in her role at CatCo. So, Kara suffered in silence, running herself ragged and working through her nights, to care for both Cat and for National City. Kara could feel the familiar tendrils of exhaustion and malnutrition, but ignored them in favor of proving to the world, and the woman whose opinion was so important to her that she could be both Personal Assistant Extraordinaire and National City Savior all at once.  
Alex asked, each time she saw or spoke to her, if she was eating and sleeping. Sometimes, Kara would smile and give her sister a convincing “of course.” Sometimes, her eyes became dark and she accused Alex of mothering her and not trusting her to care for herself.

It happened on a Tuesday. Cat was giving her a long litany of tasks that she had made it clear were to be completed by her lunch meeting at 1:30. Halfway through, Cat stopped and asked Kara if she was alright. Kara’s face had clouded over and her muscles were shaking. She looked gaunt, pale, so unlike the vibrant fresh girl she usually was. An odd look came over her features and she, somewhat involuntarily, crossed the office to Cat’s desk, speaking earnestly in perfect Kryptonese. While Cat was unable to understand the words coming from her assistant’s mouth, when Kara knelt on the floor before Cat and placed a reverent kiss on the palm of her hand, the girl’s intentions were made rather clear. When soft lips had left their mark on Cat, Kara promptly collapsed on the floor of her office and began seizing violently.


	2. Alex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon Alex as bisexual. If you don't, you may need to use your imagination.

The first time Alex Danvers threatened someone’s life was the first time her parents went out of town, leaving her in charge. She was supposed to be keeping an eye on her little sister, but she had Jamie Dunn pinned to the sofa and last she checked, Kara was still in her room trying to practice her flute without freezing the mouthpiece. Jamie let out a little whimper when Alex sucked on her neck ‘right there’ and Alex no longer cared if Kara had turned her room into an ice fortress as long as she kept hearing those noises come from that girl. Just as she snuck a hand underneath the hem of Jamie’s cotton v-neck the girl under her let out a screech and sprang from the sofa, throwing Alex to a heap on the floor. It was then Alex noticed the orange goo dripping not only from her own hair, but from Jamie’s hair, down her neck, onto Jeremiah’s prized leather sofa. She pulled some of the substance from her hair, sniffed it, and touched it to her tongue. Cheez Wiz. Then she looked up and saw Kara, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a can of spray cheese in each hand, grinning as though she had just won the lottery. 

“Gotcha,” Kara teased and ran from the room, through the backdoor and into the yard.

Alex glanced to Jamie, who was fuming on the floor, streaks of orange cheese coloring her hair and face.

“I’ll be right back,” she said darkly and stalked after her sister. “KARA! You will get back into this house, and clean this up or so help me you’re going to wish you never set foot on this planet!”

She heard Kara’s giggle from the rooftop and climbed the trellis after her. “I’m gonna kill you, you little alien freak!” But Kara was already inside her room, down the stairs and apologizing to Jamie before Alex made the rooftop.

Nobody could stay mad at little Kara Danvers for long, the brat, so Jamie forgave her in the end, but Alex never did get her to make that noise again.

 

The first time Alex Danvers threatened someone’s life and actually meant it, was her first week at the DEO. They had finally apprehended a particularly ornery Fort Rozz inmate and Alex was escorting her to her cell. The creature, tall, with blueish skin and a menacing snarl got a final dig at Alex before being put away. “You know,” she said in a lilting voice that belied her true darkness, “remind me to thank that little Krypton pet of yours someday. Without her, I’d still be locked up in Rozz. And if you wretched humans kill me, at least I will have had some fun before I go. Where is she anyway? Got her hidden away somewhere? She always was a cute little thing. Why don’t you have her out there, fighting crime like her cousin?”

The knife was out of her boot before she’d realized she’d drawn it. Though the alien was two heads taller than her, Alex slammed her against the nearest corridor, swept her knees to bring her to the floor and held the serrated knife menacingly to her neck. “You so much as THINK of my sister again and I will have you opened from forehead to fingertips. She could feel the tip of the blade sinking dangerously into blue-tinged flesh and saw what might have passed for fear cross the creature’s eyes before throwing her into her cell, spitting on her.

She’d been pulled off field duty for a month after that. When Kara found out she didn’t speak to her for a few days, but in the end, Alex knew it was worth it.

 

The first time Alex Danvers threatened someone’s life and was actually afraid she’d follow through, was the day Kara collapsed in Cat Grant’s high-rise office. A frantic phone call from Winn, “Come fast, something’s wrong with Kara,” had Alex and Hank in Cat’s inner office in less than 10 minutes, a helicopter idling atop the building.

Alex knelt next to her sister, pushing blonde strands of her sweaty forehead. “I’m here, sis. It’s me. Shhh. I’ve got you.” 

Kara’s seizures had stopped, but she still shivered violently and she was still mumbling in Kryptonese. 

Cat stood over them and tried to explain. Alex couldn’t bear to hear another word. She flew at the diminutive blonde, backing her into a glass wall and pressing a strong forearm just beneath her trachea. A few inches up and Alex could steal the breath from this traitorous woman without a second thought.

“You did this to her,” she snarled. “You push her and push her and push her, until she has no choice but to break. She. Does. Everything for you and you can’t even muster a thank you on a daily basis. I should take from you everything you’ve taken from her. Peace, sleep, comfort. You suck them from her like the vamp you are.” A strangled sob escaped her throat. “You had better hope she survives, Miss Grant,” she hissed. “Because if my sister dies, I will end you.” The venom was gone as tears leaked down her face. She released Cat and turned. She hefted her still shaking sister in her arms and carried her to the helicopter on her own.


	3. Cat

The first time Cat Grant let herself cry, was the day her second son was born. She’d been taught from the time she was a little girl that big girls did not cry, they made their way in the world with power and determination and coldness. Crying was for people who let things happen to them. Fighting was for people who made things happen.

But Carter was a second chance, a reason to believe that she was still capable of unconditional love, of guiding someone through life and watching them grow by her hand.  
So, when Carter’s father left to have a celebratory cigar at the club with his friends, she sat in her hospital room at National City Presbyterian, clinging to her son as tears dripped onto his pale blue baby blanket.

 

The first time Cat Grant had wished someone else could see her cry was in Kara Danvers medical containment at the DEO. The statuesque brunette who had threatened her life, said the last time this happened, Kara had slept almost two days. It had been five days of peaceful sleep, complete with a feeding tube to ensure her nutrients were replaced, and discussions were beginning to be had surrounding what would happen if Supergirl never woke up.

She had been given permission, reluctantly by Alex, to sit for awhile by Kara’s bedside. Gingerly, tentatively, she took Kara’s hand in her own and studied it. She’d seen those hands do so many things, take a thousand pages of notes, make a hundred cocktails for her, open elevator cars, heft airplanes and towncars and helicopters and hug her son. Five days ago, those hands held hers, as the woman behind them spoke words of love in the language of her people.

She was overwhelmed with feeling and released and involuntary sob, laying her smooth forehead on that perfect hand. Cat Grant couldn’t bear for anyone to see her cry, but in that moment, she would have traded her entire empire to see those blue eyes open to witness her sorrow.

“I’m so sorry, Kara.” The tears came in earnest.

 

The first time Cat Grant allowed someone else to see her cry, she was in Kara Danvers bed.

Ten days, Supergirl had slept, and awoke one morning to an empty room in an empty corridor in the austere surroundings of the DEO. The call had come to Cat from Alex herself.   
“She’s awake.”

She had shown up at Kara’s apartment door five hours later.

Surrounded by a curtain of dark golden hair, with the radiant face of the woman she loved hovering just out of reach of her lips, Cat sighed and felt the familiar sting at the corners of her eyes.

With three of those perfect fingers buried inside of her, a single tear spilled over.

“Cat,” Kara whispered, like a prayer. Kara’s thumb caught that tear and she leaned down and kissed her.

Cat came with a sob and buried her face in Kara’s shoulder. Kara held her head and whispered to her, once again, in vaguely familiar Kryptonian.

“What does it mean?” Cat asked with a small hiccup.

“It doesn’t translate well.” Kara hedged. “Something like, ‘All the love of our House, bestowed upon you, all the love of my heart, given freely.’ Cheesy, I know.” Kara blushed and ran a hand down Cat’s arm, pulling up her hand and placing a reverent kiss on the palm.

Cat let one final tear fall.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you maybe want to imagine that the end of this fic rolls into my other fic, Ghostbusters, that may not be terrible :-)


End file.
